The Glass God by Kate Griffin Read Free Book Online Page B

on people disappearing?”
    Miles shook his head, and tossed the file on kelkie nests back into the mess of paper on the floor. He fumbled at random for another document.
    “Um… newspaper clippings?” suggested Rhys, holding up a file. Sharon snatched it from his hand. A note on the front declared in Swift’s scrawled handwriting, Bad Stuff. She scowled. If ever a man had needed to buy himself a copy of Management for Beginners it was the Midnight Mayor. If he was lucky, she’d even lend him hers, once she was through the chapter on successful negotiation strategies for the executive team.
    She flicked through the clippings. They were sparse, but well fingered. The oldest dated from three weeks before, and reported that Kathleen Briars, a twenty-one-year-old mathematics student living in Roehampton, hadn’t returned to her home, and parents and police were worried. The most recent reported that Yusef Kanun, sixty-seven-year-old former car dealer, had also vanished. Said the police spokesperson:
    “We have received no evidence of foul play. It is sad but true that people often leave their homes for reasons which are not, of themselves, criminal, nor constitute a criminal act.”
    In one photo a much younger Yusef Kanun was beaming at the camera, his hand resting on the bonnet of a convertible car. Another showed a pair of shoes, their laces tied together, thrown over a leafless tree branch. The caption read: “Mr Kanun’s shoes were spotted by his nephew a few hours after he was reported missing. There were no reported signs of violence in the area.”
    Sharon closed the file of clippings and slipped it into her shoulder bag. Looking up at the map on the wall, she wondered how many little red dots there were on it, and guessed at least thirty. Indicating the map, she murmured, “Anyone know what this is?”
    After a pause, Miles said, “The Midnight Mayor was a rather private person. As far as I’m aware, the map was entirely his own work.”
    Sharon sighed. “Bloody typical. Hasn’t this guy heard of ccing his emails?”
    A thought snapped into her mind. She turned back to the computer, and went to Swift’s email. A box appeared requesting the password. She glanced up at the Alderman. “Hey – you know how to get into this guy’s email?”
    “I believe that the Midnight Mayor’s system is designed to be secure against both technological and magical attack,” replied Miles. “He is the defender of the city, after all.”
    Rhys, however, was on his feet. “Email?” he asked, eyes glowing. “I’m good with email.”
    Sharon clambered off her perch, and balanced with one foot in a patch of empty floor and the other on a pile of reports, so that Rhys could position himself atop the volumes piled on Swift’s chair. He leant over the keyboard, frowning with concentration. “Passwords,” he murmured. “Passwords…⁠”
    He tried a couple out.
    “Well, at least the password isn’t ‘password’,” he mused. “Embarrassing how often you see that.”
    “I’m kinda hoping you’ve got more tricks up your sleeve than just typing ‘password’?”
    “I am an IT manager!” he replied with a little huff.
    Sharon shrugged, and made her way carefully across the floor towards the map. On the other side of the room, Miles called out, “More tea, anyone?”
    “God, yes.”
    “Yes, please!”
    He bounded up and headed for the door. It closed behind him, and Sharon caught sight of Rhys’s expression as he looked up from the keyboard. “Hey,” she said, “he did offer to make the tea. It’s not like I actually told him to be a minion.”
    Sharon scanned the map once more. Little red dots on a big piece of paper. She pulled out the file of newspaper clippings, checked a couple of dates, then looked up and ran her fingers over the map. A dot for the day of Darren’s disappearance was marked, and labelled, Archway. There was also a dot for the day that Yusef had vanished, carefully annotated. Dozens of